Editor’s note: Spoilers. Late Night with the Devil (2023) is rated US R / UK 15 with content warnings for violence and gore.
One of my favorite definitions of horror is William Friedkin‘s:
‘True horror is seeing something approach.’
Late Night With The Devil cracks the lens through which we watch that approach.
Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) is the King of Almost, a ’70s talk show host promoted to the national stage along with sidekick Gus (Rhys Auteri). He’s starting to fade, and desperate to stay in the spotlight, he organizes a Halloween blowout show pitting psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi) and renowned skeptic Carmichael (Ian Bliss) head to head. And for the grand finale, a live interview with Doctor June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her subject Lilly D’Abo (Ingrid Torelli), a young girl who claims to be possessed.
From the moment Michael Ironside’s godlike tones explain what we’re watching is recovered footage, we know what we’re in for. Writer/director duo Colin and Cameron Cairnes find new ways to descend into the hell of live televison as behind the scenes footage turns the commercial breaks into widening cracks in Jack’s (and reality’s) façade. Then Lilly arrives and the movie bends around her gravity. Jack becoming a literal sideshow as Lilly regally stares down both the audience and the cameras. The classic character beats are there: playing with her food, offhanded references to things she shouldn’t know, unsettling voice shifts. She knows she’s the main event, and we’re along for the ride as the characters reach the same horrifying realization.
Lilly’s control is such a foregone conclusion the directors place the dramatic weight of the movie elsewhere.
The opening narration discusses the role Jack’s show had in easing the psyche of a trouble country, and we see that embodied in Dastmalchian and Auteri’s charming, earnestly goofy double act. Jack and Gus are good guys, but only Gus still embodies the spirit of the show’s original intent as opposed to what it’s becoming in front of our eyes. It’s a clever move, echoing Ghostwatch‘s subversion of form and tying it to the rising paranoia of the US in the 1970s. The epochal first remake of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers is also set in this period, and the two movies vibrate with the same terse energy of things spiraling out of control.
Only in Late Night with the Devil, that anarchy ripples out through the cameras and down the timeline as something dark nests within the very concept of talk shows. After all, why possess one little girl when you can haunt a zeitgeist?
Jack Delroy, a chat show host played by David Dastmalchian, sits with his guests professional Carmichael, Doctor June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon) and her subject Lilly D’Abo (Ingrid Torelli), a young girl who claims to be possessed. Lilly is staring right at the camera.
The clash between the rational and the supernatural drives the narrative. Bazzi’s Christou is so fully formed he feels like he’s come in from another story, and Bazzi makes a very smart choice with an accent shift at one point that makes us question what we know even as we have it confirmed. He’s a nervy, kinetic presence; Bliss’ suede-drenched lounge skeptic is the perfect foil for him. A former magician Carmichael is the self-appointed smartest person in the room and never lets anyone forget it. For most of the movie he’s the the rock Lilly breaks against and the Cairnes give him an extended sequence showing the power of suggestion which keys us in on some of the rules of the game even as Lilly cheerily breaks them.
A clear riff on Ur-debunker James Randi, Carmichael is odious precisely because he’s reassuring, a realization that throws the audience off balance and dumps them into the final act., There, bathed in the seething cathode static of the thing inside Lilly, Carmichael is confronted with absolute proof of what he refuses, and submits to it utterly. It’s horrific and satisfying, pathetic and justifiable. Rational, in the way the events aren’t.
But this is Jack’s story. And all of this is Jack’s fault, mired in conspiracy theory, capitalism, greed, and grief. Jack’s deceased wife, played with chilly, exhausted kindness by Georgina Haig, is presented as a near saint-like figure, bearing her suffering with grace and using it to give her husband’s career the boost it needs. It harmonizes with Carmichael’s plot, but it’s only as the movie finishes that you realize we can no longer trust what is fantasy and what is reality. Jack’s final unspeakable acts either give her the agency she’s denied, or his unspeakable justifications deny her of everything.
You don’t know. Neither does Jack. We, at least can leave. Jack is stuck here: on stage, famous, alone. Forever.
Silhouetted against an audience, somehow also in shadow, Jack Delroy realises he’s in his own personal Hell.
Late Night With The Devil is available on streaming and physical disc now.
A version of this review appeared in The Full Lid in March
Like this kind of story? Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds was among the first (and arguably the first genre) story to play with the media like this. Its productions have a storied history all their own. The original 1938 remastered recording is available on Internet Archive.
Ghostwatch, aka the scare of a British generation, is available on Blu-ray.
Without Warning, which riffs on similar ideas in a science fiction flavor, is not available for purchase anywhere I could find. On a related note exciting things happen if you search ‘Without Warning 1994’ on YouTube.